Sometimes I’ll read something by a well-known, lauded author and have absolutely no idea what he or she is talking about. I just finished an old review by John Updike of an Alan Hollinghurst novel. I couldn’t tell if it was a good review or a bad review. But I think it was mostly a complaining review: that because Hollingurst’s novel was mainly about homosexual males, it was dull. This was the last line of his review.
Perhaps the male homosexual, uncushioned as he is by society’s circumambient encouragements to breed, feels the isolated, disquieted human condition with a special bleakness: he must take it straight.
I don’t know what “he must take it straight” means, in this context. Or was he just trying to be clever by using the word straight and got away with a meaningless clause? The gist of the review was that he, Updike, couldn’t relate to a bunch of gay guys that didn’t have to worry about such things as children (Updike calls it breeding), marriage, and family. The sentence would make more sense if it didn’t have the “he must take it straight” attached. “Perhaps gays feel the human condition with a special bleakness.” Perhaps we do. I don’t think we do, but it’s a possibility and I could consider it in the same way that people in a cult might claim to be happier than people who are not. Maybe they are.
But then you have to look at the assumption he makes: “uncushioned as he is,” and “by society’s circumambient encouragements to breed.” He assumes that the pressure society puts on people to marry and have children is a cushion rather than some sort of Iron Maiden. This, to me, is absolute lunacy. But it does express the feelings of many people — perhaps a majority of people — who prefer to live under systems of control: they know what they can do and can’t do. They know the limits. They know what they can get away with. They know what to pursue and what not to bother with. They know the world will treat them well if they have 2 1/2 children.
If this is what he talking about, then taking it straight must mean “taking life’s bleakness” without any mixers or dilutions, as in a drink. A straight whisky, for example, as opposed to “neat” or “on the rocks” or “with a twist.”
I think this is a good example of why English literature studies decided to reject “Dead White Men” or in other cases, the “Straight white male.” Updike’s inability to relate to a bunch of gays who aren’t concerned with heterosexual lives implies that all things must relate, somehow, to the straight white man. Like if it doesn’t interest a straight white guy, then it’s not worth publishing. I realize this is a terrible simplification, and all based on a review of a forgotten book. But it’s kind of exemplary of the difficulty we, all of us, have in finding interest in cultures outside our own. It’s well documented and even if you did your own friend-survey you’d probably find a couple or maybe even a handful of women who read novels, but no men. And if any of your men friends do read, they will probably read non-fiction books about wars, science, technology, history. Religious people will read about their own religion — (which is the wrong thing to do. If you’re interested in spirituality, you should read about other people’s religions.). But if you ask men, “Are they interested in women’s stories,” they will probably say no. But if you ask women, they will say they are interested in both women’s and men’s stories. Women propelled one of the most popular gay novels into the upper ranks, “A Little Life,” and also, recently, “Heated Rivalary.” The former I couldn’t stand and almost pulped my copy of it. The latter I haven’t read and probably won’t. But it isn’t men making these books into huge successes.
Straight white men have always been interested in straight white men. Shakespeare, our first and probably the only writer absolutely necessary, other than, perhaps, Homer, actually did show an interest in both male and female lives, as well as other races and religions. But he had to write “on the down low” in some sense. He was writing under a totalitarian government, so there is no contemporary criticism of his own era. Every single play of his takes place in another country, or in another time. But he also gave life to more female characters that remain alive today in our consciousness: more than Virginia Woolf or Aphra Behn or his own contemporary Christopher Marlowe. Think of Lady MacBeth, Cleopatra, Juliet, Ophelia, Beatrice, or Claudia. I’m probably missing some. They are all women (and one girl) in their own right. We can think of them as their own personalities — not as appendages to men.
But for the most part, straight white men have written about straight white men. And Updike is the same. When confronted with a lifestyle he could not stomach or conceive, he complained about it. Condemned it as particularly bleak. (And this, despite his own life, being an absolute mess of serial infidelity and chaos).
The review is from 1999 so it’s now ancient history already. But actually, it was in the 80s when people started to question the “dead white men” aspect of literature studies. In a way, he was still stuck in the 60s when he was forced to read and review this novel.
The book, by the way, was “The Spell,” which I didn’t read and might have disliked as much as Updike did. I read “The Swimming Pool Library,” and thought it was terrific. But “In the Line of Beauty,” I couldn’t even read 10 pages. Hollinghurst has always been a little hit or miss for me.